Aquarius’ Commercial Counterparts
The Aquarius Habitat supports Saturation Divers at a depth of 47 Feet Sea Water. The commercial diving industry conducts saturation diving to much greater depths utilizing chambers on board a Dive Support Vessel (SDV) and a Diving Bell for lowering divers to the sea floor. One of the largest and most modern saturation diving systems in operation today is the DSV Skandi Arctic. Aquarius Reef Base’s Operations Director, Saul Rosser, also happens to have been heavily involved in the design of this system which can take divers to 350 Meters Sea Water (1,150 Feet Sea Water). Discovery Science recently produced an episode of their Mighty Ships series on the Skandi Arctic and it can be viewed at the following link:
One Response So Far
Chris Martens | December 27th, 2011
As a veteran of six saturation dive missions at Aquarius Reef Base, I was fascinated to watch the Discovery Channel Mighty Ships documentary on a saturation dive mission at 120 meters depth in the North Sea. The two-week North Sea mission involved gas wellhead repairs. It’s fantastic that marine scientists, including my group at UNC-Chapel Hill, are also able to take advantage of these advanced diving technologies to conduct extended oceanographic research missions in living coral reef environments. Hats off to our UNC-Wilmington-NURC colleagues for making this unrivaled ocean access possible!
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